All the healthy food, safe medicine, regenerative agriculture, unpolluted water, and clean air, and community engagement mean pretty much nothing if it is not open to all. We live in a segregated country where privilege accrues to people like me – and I am a very narrow demographic when you consider the diversity around the globe and right here at home.

This section runs the risk of looking like the “ethnic aisle” at the supermarket, where anything not familiar Americans of European descent gets shelved for those pursuing “adventurous” recipes. Let’s not do that. Where I can have the most effect in the cause of ensuring access is often small interventions for individuals and groups. Often, this means simply quietly stepping aside to make room at the table for others. There is no way to tell these stories here without seeming arrogant, condescending, and heroic, so let’s not do that either. Feel free to ask me in person, I am happy to share.

The groups highlighted in this section are especially important to me and are good places to engage and donate. Money matters. Hand it over as often as you can. In fact, there are so many effective and robust food sovereignty and security efforts under way, it’s only possible to scratch the surface of the possibilities. I recommend you ask where in your community you can take part.

Equity includes not just Indigenous, African Americans, global immigrants, Latinos, and other people of color in North America. The average rural community and all its citizens operate under duress every day. I take great inspiration from the initiatives these regular people have undertaken in diverse groups and varying circumstances to take back their food shed and community democracy. If you need hope for America, just look inward.

Equity also applies to all the peoples of the world who are under threat of being colonized by global conglomerates and imperial governments. Everyone is recolonizing Africa, trying to make it’s people dependent on patented seeds, petrochemical fertilizers and herbicides, and concentrated foreign control of plantations, aggregations, processing and logistics. Nothing has changed since the Spanish and Portuguese captured the Western Hemisphere while Belgium, France, Britain and Germany razed the civilizations of Asia and Africa. Greed is constant, and the global army of propagandists willing to sell their integrity post by post and article by article is depressing. In response, I charge you who read this to push back at every opportunity. Don’t worry, they are snowflakes living in a protective bubble. They have no words to respond to directed truthful criticism.

Last but not least, equity extends to women and children. As we see in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, access to nutritious food, clean water, education, healthcare, safe living and working conditions, bodily security, and freedom to make life choices are all goals that cannot be overlooked. Yet, even though these people are a majority of humans on the planet, and often provide in some way the luxuries we take for granted, they are easy to forget. Let’s not.

PS: Language matters. Write me if I can do better. Thanks.